Better Windows Services is services.msc rebuilt for people who administer Windows machines - a window and a command line over one engine. Ask the machine a question instead of scrolling eight hundred rows. See what a change will do before you press anything. And the part services.msc never had: freeze every service into a file, and a week later ask what changed.

https://betterwindowsservices.donislawdev.com/

Features

  • Ask, instead of scroll - start:auto !status:running is what should be up and is not. One language, in the search box and in bws list --query, with the fields offered as you type.
  • Show the plan before anything happens - every stop, start, restart and start type change is previewed with the services it takes down with it, and the preview is what runs.
  • Tell you what drifted - bws snapshot create freezes the machine into a file, and bws snapshot diff says what changed since, configuration apart from what merely started or stopped.
  • Stop a service that will not stop - it asks politely first and ends the process only if that fails, naming every other service that lives in it.
  • Show what services.msc hides - who signed the binary and whether Windows trusts it, triggers, privileges, the security descriptor, the process and its memory. As columns, and as things to search on.
  • Fit into scripts - --json on every command, an exit code for every ending, and 5 when a diff finds drift.
  • Mass actions, want to stop/start/restart/anything else for 5/10/15 services?
  • Run from one file, offline - no installer, no .NET to install, and it never talks to the internet. Reading needs no administrator rights. GPL-3.0.

Project Samples

Project Activity

See All Activity >

License

GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPLv3)

Follow Better Windows Services

Better Windows Services Web Site

Other Useful Business Software
Go from Code to Production URL in Seconds Icon
Go from Code to Production URL in Seconds

Cloud Run deploys apps in any language instantly. Scales to zero. Pay only when code runs.

Skip the Kubernetes configs. Cloud Run handles HTTPS, scaling, and infrastructure automatically. Two million requests free per month.
Start Free
Rate This Project
Login To Rate This Project

User Reviews

Be the first to post a review of Better Windows Services!

Additional Project Details

Operating Systems

Windows

Languages

English

Intended Audience

Auditors, Security Professionals, System Administrators

User Interface

.NET/Mono, Console/Terminal

Programming Language

C#

Related Categories

C# System Software, C# Systems Administration Software, C# System Monitoring Tool

Registered

2026-09-24